Enterprise mobility can be a massive expense for companies and IT departments to deal with. A recent survey found that US companies spent $1,840 per employee each year to provide them with mobile devices, with 48% of that going to carrier charges for mobile access with data services.

Unfortunately, many companies have limited flexibility in providing the proper mobile access for end users and are paying for data that they aren’t using, or are stuck paying overages due to going over their allotted data limit/s. This inefficiency is the result of long term contracts with cookie cutter rate plans that do not fit the Clients business requirements and needs. This leads to mobile access that does not scale with the business resulting in wasted IT budgets that prevent companies from investing in new technologies or growing their business.

Enterprise mobility contractual lock-in

Everyone is familiar with the idea of contractual lock-in. When you go to purchase a new smartphone, you’re usually forced to choose between various two year plans. Choosing the right one is often a very difficult decision. You start to ask questions like - “How much data will I be using in two years?” “Will a new smartphone come out between now and then that I would want to switch to?” “What if I need to switch plans part way through?”

Scale this up to the enterprise level, and these questions become even more critical. In today’s fast moving corporate shift to digital business world, two years is a long time. Growing companies need the ability and flexibility to scale up quickly to add new employees or adopt new applications that increase productivity. In some cases, seasonal sales cycles mean employees will have varying data usage throughout the year.

Trying to account for all of these factors can lead to spending way too much on data that employees aren’t using, while underestimating usage leads to overage charges and fees. And if an enterprise ever tries to switch plans or carriers, they are hit with early termination fees. No matter how you look at it, the lack of flexibility in traditional contracts ends up costing the enterprise thousands of dollars annually.

Inefficient data usage

Nearly all direct carriers track the data usage of each individual employee within the enterprise. This means that, for the company as a whole, data is being used incredibly inefficiently. Some employees may constantly go over their data limit, leading to surcharges and overage fees, while others may hardly use any data at all.

If taken on aggregate (Average Rate Per User), the total data usage of all employees ends up being less than their combined limits, but the company still ends up paying more. Scale that up to hundreds or thousands of employees, and it quickly becomes clear how much is wasted in this way.

Enterprises who try to account for this by having different plans depending on the employee’s role or position open themselves up to billing headaches. Having multiple contracts from multiple providers ends up wasting time, resources and money while creating unneeded complexity within the organization.

Don’t pay for data you won’t use

These common challenges can be overcome with flexible Client specific Unlimited Talk/Text with Data, Data Only and Connected device/s plans that allow enterprises to scale up or down as determined by their business needs. Companies and IT departments can scale mobile access to meet business and end user requirements seamlessly and better allocate budgets to new technologies that will drive the business forward. With the right plan in place, enterprises can stop looking at mobility as a costly expense and start looking at it as a productivity tool that helps employees get their jobs done.